Design for second screens

How can interaction design on a second screen be the motivation for tweens to engage in a television show? I set out to discover an answer for this question in my master thesis.

Broadcast Companies have an increasing focus on second screen applications, but seldom know what to have on the new platform. Seeing that interaction design was my focus during my studies, I decided to take a closer look at that part of the second screen phenomenon. I used DR ULTRA Live (a live television program for children) as the overall case for my research.

The Process

Workshops with tweens

Smiley report

Creating a comic strip

Ideas for apps

To figure out what tweens would be motivated by and how to engage them, I held two workshops with 6 children at age 11. I used various props and methods to get the children to verbalise their thoughts and bring the talk down to a concrete level. At the first workshop I used a disguised questionnaire (the smileyreport) to get them to talk about one their interests and various aspects that related to motivation. Likewise, I had them create a comic strip from pre-supplied materials to gain an insight into their engagement.

At the second workshop the tweens were tasked with coming up with an idea for an app, which at first was only supposed to be a game, but halfway through the workshop, they had to figure out how their game could also function as a second screen app.

The Result

Means of interaction

Through an analysis of the workshops I arrived at five means of interaction to engage tweens: construction, reflection of personality, joint creation, multiple levels of complexity and patches & mods.

Each of these features on a second screen platform would motivate the children in my study to engage in a live television program. To get a better grasp of what I mean by these five concepts, you would have to read my thesis Download (.pdf only in Danish).